Nadezhda Konstantinovna is writing to you about other
matters, but I will reply to your P.S. to me.

You write that “our people have no evil intentions”, and
you add that for the Kievskys “it’s a matter of the national
question alone, and that they write the articles
themselves”.

If that were the case, why then have a paragraph in the
Rules about the right of discussion for contributors on the
demand of two (note: not even three, but two, i.e., distrust
of Bukharin on the part of the Japanese)? In that event,
this paragraph would have no meaning. And it is a thing
without precedent for two editors out of six or seven to
demand “freedom” of discussion (alleged discussion) not for
themselves, but for contributors.

No. The Japanese woman cannot insert meaningless
paragraphs into the Rules. The meaning of this paragraph is
just this, and only this, that our hands are being tied, and
we find ourselves helpless against the striving of the Poles
to start an intrigue.

You write that you have not seen Gazeta Robotnicza (you
should have been sent it, and also the C.O.A. resolution
adopted with the participation of Grigory: I am writing to him
and Zina at once, to have them send it to you immediately).
You say, moreover, that for this reason “you don’t know
what it’s all about”.

But you add there and then, for some reason: “I know,
I feel, that you have cooled off towards Radek and Co.”

You will agree that this is somewhat strange. After all,
my apprehension about intrigue on the part of Radek and
Co., my conviction that this is so, springs directly from the
facts concerning Vorbote (I wrote to you about
it).[1]
That is the first point. And the second, and most important,
is that it springs from Gazeta Robotnicza.

It is in that paper that Radek and Co. began an intrigue
against us, when we had nowhere written a single line
against
them![2] After all, this is a fact. You can’t brush
facts aside. The old “game” (the word used in the C.O.A.
resolution) of playing up our split with Chkheidze and Co.
began in Gazeta Robotnicza, and is Tyszka’s old, long
familiar
game.[3]

So what are we to do? Either we allow this game not only
to grow unhindered, but to seep through to our journal.
This is what the paragraph in the Japanese woman’s draft
Rules leads to! And it would mean a hopeless and final war
against Radek and Co.

You write, as though against me, that “it is not to our
advantage to quarrel with the Zimmerwald Left”.

I reply: if we are not to have a final quarrel with Radek
and Co. (and through them with others as well, should
things go badly), we must, for that very purpose, make
this kind of “game” and intrigue impossible in our journal.

That is just why I refuse to go along with the discussing
“contributors”, and refuse to join Kommunist.

It’s one of two things: if we agree to restore Kommunist,
it would mean opening the door to the development of that
intrigue; it would mean us opening the door to it. This
would be a mad policy, I am sure. Does the Japanese woman
understand all its implications? I don’t know, but that isn’t
very important: the “mechanics” of relations abroad would
itself lead to such a result, regardless of the malice or angelic
goodness and purity of the Japanese woman’s intentions.

The other prospect: not to revive Kommunist. To issue
another miscellany. Give the editors the right of discussion.
Analyse the national question. Beat off Gazeta Robotnicza’s
game and intrigue.

Radek or his friends attacked us in Gazeta Robotnicza.
We replied in our
miscellany,[4] only in ours, please note,
not in one published in common with the Zimmerwald Left of
other countries.

The Zimmerwald Left, whom Radek tried without success
to drag into a quarrel with us at Kienthal (in talks with
Flatten and others, he wanted to deprive us of equality in
the main commission of the Left but the Left wouldn’t let
him do it)—these Zimmerwald Left have nothing to do with
the struggle between Gazeta Robotnicza and Sbornik
Sotsial-Demokrata.

The Zimmerwald Left cannot intervene in this struggle,
they cannot take offence and complain: Radek and Co. were
the first to attack in Gazeta Robotnicza, and they have
had their reply in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata (or in some
other miscellany). In such a situation, no efforts by Radek
and Co. can conceivably bring about a quarrel between
ourselves and the Zimmerwald Left (just as at Kienthal Radek
failed to set us at loggerheads, either with Flatten or with
the German Left, though he did try to).

While Radek and Co. reply to us in the next issue of Gazeta
Robotnicza, and we to them in another miscellany (I insist
absolutely on agreements from miscellany to miscellany),
quite a lot of time will go by.

And during all that time, if that is the approach, Radek and
Co.’s dirty trick in Gazeta Robotnicza will not be able to
set us at loggerheads with the Left.

That is why I have said, and still say, that I will not on any
account now either join Kommunist, or accept equal rights
with the Japanese woman, or membership at all jointly
with Radek in our own miscellany, because I am convinced
that this will make inevitable a quarrel with the Left.

If we issue Kommunist No. 3,
then Radek and Bronski and
Pannekoek (and the general public) will have the right to
expect, and will expect, a continuation of the same thing;
they will have the right to expect, and will expect, all
possible guarantees for contributors; they will have the right,
finally (and this is particularly important), to take offence
and intervene if we reply there to Gazeta Robotnicza’s dirty
tricks. This throws the gates wide open to intrigue.

In that event, Radek and Co. will surely bring about a
quarrel between us and the Left, because even Pannekoek
will have the most sacred right to say: it wasn’t that
kind of Kommunist that I agreed to join, I don’t want
“attacks” on Gazeta Robotnicza (he will depict defence as
attack: you know how that’s done).

In that case, Radek and Co. will have the right to issue
any letter to the general public, both in Russian and in
German; they will have the right to say: Kommunist was in
practice (this is a fact) the common organ of yourselves+
Pannekoek+Radek+Bronski, while you use it to “offend”
Gazeta Robotnicza, you are beginning to split the Left, and
so on and so forth (as he had already been saying at
Kienthal, note that: he had already used this strategy at
Kienthal).

And in the eyes of the whole Left, the blame falls on us! We
allowed ourselves to be drawn into a quarrel with the Left,
we fell into the Tyszka trap. That is where continuing the
Kommunist leads to; that is why I refuse to go in.

Whereas on the contrary, I repeat, if—in a separate, new
miscellany, without Pannekoek, Radek, Bronski—we reply
to Gazeta Robotnicza, reply to Bukharin and anyone else,
this is absolutely no concern of the Zimmerwald Left, and they
cannot either interfere or take offence. Radek cannot “
complain” either to Pannekoek or to the Germans that Sbornik
Sotsial-Demokrata has replied to Gazeta Robotnicza.

And then, in addition, there is also the question of
defeatism. The same applies.

And then there is also the question of the Chkheidze group.
The same applies.
For that is what Gazeta Robotnicza was
playing on.

If the Japanese woman has no “evil intentions”, she cannot
reject an agreement on one miscellany (without Radek and
the others), when we provide for a discussion with the
Japanese and Bukharin. We are agreeable likewise to have it in
a separate pamphlet (if Bukharin wants it, for he will then
be able in advance to look at my “tone”, about which he has
expressed fears). It will then be possible to separate the
arguments with Bukharin from the joint work with Bukharin.

Notes

[1]A reference to K. Radek’s intrigues against Lenin as a member
of the Vorbote editorial board. For details, see pp. 394–95

[2]A reference to “Thesen über Imperialismus und nationale
Unterdrückung” (Theses on Imperialism and National Oppression),
__PRINTERS_P_675_COMMENT__
43*
first published in Vorbote No. 2, April 1916, on behalf of the organ
of the Polish Social-Democratic opposition, Gazeta Robotnicza
(Workers’ Newspaper).

[3]A reference to the split within the Social-Democratic Party of
Poland and Lithuania which lasted more than four years, from
1912 to 1916.

Leon Tyszka, a member of the Chief Executive, was a leading
figure in the split. He supported the Executive and took a
conciliatory stand in respect of the anti-Bolshevik groups within
the R.S.D.L.P. on questions of Party organisation. For details
on the split, see present edition, Vol. 19, pp. 495–98.